Cathy (comic strip)

Cathy
Cathy and Irving after being married. Electra and Vivian, their dogs, are also in the picture.
Author(s)	Cathy Guisewite
Current status / schedule	Cancelled
Launch date	November 22, 1976
End date	October 3, 2010
Genre(s)	Humor, gag-a-day

Cathy was an American gag-a-day comic strip, drawn by Cathy Guisewite from 1976 until 2010. The comic is about a woman, Cathy, who struggles through the "four basic guilt groups" of life — food, love, family, and work. The strip gently pokes fun at the lives and foibles of modern women. Cathy's characteristics and issues both made fun of and sometimes fed into negative stereotypes about women. The strip debuted on November 22, 1976, and at its peak appeared in over 1,400 newspapers. The strips have been compiled into more than 20 books. Three television specials were also created. Guisewite received the National Cartoonists Society Reuben Award in 1992 for the strip.

Initially, the strip was based largely on Guisewite's own life as a single woman. "The syndicate felt it would make the strip more relatable if the character's name and my name were the same," Guisewite said in an interview. "They felt it would make it a more personal strip, and it would help people to know it was a real woman who was going through these things. I hated the idea of calling it 'Cathy.'" However, Guisewite had Cathy's longtime boyfriend Irving propose marriage on Valentine's Day 2004. The two characters married in the February 5, 2005 strip. That same year, Cathy appeared in the 75th anniversary party of Blondie and Dagwood.

On August 11, 2010, Cathy Guisewite announced the decision to end the run of Cathy. On October 3, 2010, the final strip ran, with the revelation that Cathy is pregnant with a girl.

Three animated specials were made from the strip: Cathy, Cathy's Last Resort and Cathy's Valentine. All aired on CBS, and the former won Guisewite an Emmy Award.

Defined by Cathy Guisewite, the four basic guilt groups are four types of temptation that the character Cathy faces in her daily life.

Cathy had a love/hate affair with food (especially carbs). She loved it, but hated what it did to her thighs. She was visibly overweight, but not obese; she was often shown in a department store fitting room trying to stuff herself into a bathing suit. She was constantly on a diet, weighed herself obsessively and many mornings feared to get up, believing that she had ballooned overnight. Cathy was particularly fond of chocolate, pizza, and her mother's cooking.